The Design Research Lab is a network of people, organisations, and non-human agents engaged at the intersection of technologies, materials, and social practices. Our aim is to design socially and ecologically sustainable tools, spaces, and knowledge that support people’s participation in a digital society – based on common principles of inclusiveness and respect for the planet. This puts the basic democratic right to take part in the digital sphere into practice. We start our research from individual lifeworlds and the needs of minoritized groups, beyond consumer majorities.
We are an interdisciplinary team of designers, researchers, tech-enthusiasts and critical thinkers from Berlin University of the Arts, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, as well as Einsteincenter Digital Future (ECDF).
Dr. phil. Tom Bieling is a senior researcher at Design Research Lab, Postdoc at HAW Hamburg, currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Trento and teaches at NDU St. Pölten. He studied Design at KISD (Köln International School of Design), at the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne (Germany) and Universidade Federal do Paraná, Curitiba (Brasil). He has been a visiting professor at the German University in Cairo (GUC; Faculty of Applied Sciences & Art) since 2011, is Co-Editor of the book series “Design Meanings” and Editor-in-chief at DESIGNABILTIES – Design Research Journal.
Numerous guest lectures and workshops at international universities (e.g. Mumbai, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Basel, Bern, Luzern, Milan, Portland, Spokane, Edinburgh, Brussels, Nottingham, Tallinn, Bozen/Bolzano, Trient, Bremen, Budapest, Dresden, Potsdam, Hildesheim, Eindhoven or Rotterdam).
Exhibitions in New York, London, Berlin, Vienna, Manchester, Sheffield, Milano, Brno, St. Gallen, Munich, Dresden, St. Etienne, Karlsruhe, St. Gallen, Eindhoven, St. Quirin, Darmstadt, Chemnitz, Paderborn and Cologne.
In his previous work as communication- and interaction- and user experience designer he worked with clients including Daimler-Chrysler, T-Mobile USA, Museum Ludwig, Smart or Dokumentationszentrum für Popkultur. In 2008 his first book “Gender Puppets” was published. Recent books: “Design (&) Activism” (Mimesis), “Gender (&) Design” (Mimesis) and “Inklusion als Entwurf” (Birkhäuser/DeGruyter) to be published in 2019. Tom joined the team in 2007 and was recently announced “Young Innovator of the Year” by the Falling Walls Consortium.
Further info: tombieling.com and designforschung.org
[Foto: Kai Hattermann]